TEDIOUS CHORES ELIMINATED AT A PRICE

Live with a robot vacuum for just a few weeks and two things will quickly become clear; you don’t vacuum nearly enough and your idea of ‘clean’ is not especially clean. And this goes for clean freaks and slovenly slobs alike, because robot vacuums are relentless, ruthless cleaning machines. They don’t do ‘a quick once around’, they’re meticulous and driven to cover every inch of floorspace.

But even our best buy – the Roomba – is far from the perfect cleaner. In a headtohead with our mum it would fail miserably. Robot vacs can’t tackle the stairs for one thing, and despite having advanced mapping technology, cameras and even laser guidance, they get stuck on rugs, jammed between chair legs and cause havoc with cables.

None of these models are designed to replace a normal vacuum, but what they all do well is taking the edge off the weekly clean – especially if you have pets. If you live a minimalist existence in a penthouse apartment then, thanks to your new robot friend, you may never need to vacuum again, but if you have a house full of kids, toys, pets and general chaos, you might find yourself with one more thing to tidy away when you get home from work.